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This chapter takes up this theme in more transnational terms, examining the extensive “repurposing” of participatory-budgeting routines in the context of mainstream experiments in inclusive local governance. The “pasteurized” version of PB favored by the multilateral agencies is seen to have traveled far and fast, but the transformative potential of the original seems to have been lost along the way.

This chapter centers on the storied site of PB’s “invention.” Though still an inspiration to many, the Porto Alegre experience illustrates the political slipperiness of the PB concept, which under more conservative administrations has become a hollowed out version of its former self. Policy models are consequently not always what they seem, even in their sites of authenticity.

The concept of participatory budgeting was developed as a means of bypassing corrupt local elites and creating better governance in developing countries. Applied in the global north, it attempts to give power back to communities to set spending priorities within their neighbourhoods. This chapter examines two attempts at participatory budgeting for the arts in Birmingham – the city council’s Arts Champions scheme and a participatory action research project led by the author. Two key problems highlighted by the case studies are identified. First, funders being reluctant to hand full control to neighbourhoods over how spending is undertaken, with a tendency to push communities toward the funders’ spending priorities. Second, and related to this, is a lack of capacity at neighbourhood level to move beyond the “ideas generation” stage, toward having the confidence to design and commission cultural projects to realise those ideas. This speaks to wider problems in deprived communities – notably education, skills and confidence – that cannot be tackled simply by adding cultural activity.

This chapter explores how, in September 2013, the White House reached out to the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) group to survey how the federal government could support PB. The early success of PB in the US provided a new model for beefing up the participation side of open government. White House communications contacted the PBP along with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and together they explored how federal housing and community development funds could be allocated through PB. The PBP also decided to focus more on developing the common tools and resources that could enable PB to grow dramatically across the US and beyond. They also designed new training methods and toolkits to enable community members to play a stronger role in both advocacy and implementation.

This chapter explores the vital role of policy networks in the transnational (re)construction of the PB field, concluding that these are nevertheless invariably connected to centers of political power.

Democratic citizens often feel disempowered by contemporary politics, but deliberative democracy provides an antidote by creating opportunities for the public to engage in meaningful decision making. This chapter introduces readers to a few of those projects, including AmericaSpeaks, Participatory Budgeting, and the CIR and provides insight from one citizen who has engaged in two of those forums. These processes bring diverse citizens together to learn about and discuss public problems with the goal of creating better policy decisions. Initiatives and referenda were initially proposed with similar goals of empowering the public but have become beholden to the same problems that plague the rest of governance, namely the outsized influence of money and the proliferation of manipulative rhetoric. The CIR and processes like it attempt to bridge the decision-making power of initiative elections with the informed judgment gained in deliberative forums.

This chapter introduces the reader to PB’s core principles and basic institutional design. The core principles include voice, vote, social justice, social inclusion, and oversight. All PB programs adhere to these principles, but each program gives different weights to each principle, which helps to account for the differences in program design around the world. The chapter provides a detailed explanation of PB, based on the Porto Alegre model, which emerged as the early example that other governments sought to replicate. The chapter also introduces three guiding questions that shape the rest of the book: How has PB transformed during the past thirty years as it spreads around the globe? What are the causal mechanisms through which PB programs may produce social and political change? To what extent have PB programs actually generated this social and political change? The authors emphasize these questions as critical for advancing theoretical and empirical debates surrounding PB as well as participatory democratic institutions in general.

Latin America is PB’s birthplace and the region where it was first widely adopted. PB currently exists in almost every country of this region of the world. This chapter documents PB development in Brazil, its spread from Brazil to other countries as well as PB’s transformation since the 1990s, when it changed from a social justice program to a policy tool that promotes citizen empowerment and community mobilization. Latin America also led the way with the first mandated programs, as Peru’s national government was the first country in the world to require that all subnational governments adopt PB. Latin American PB programs are among the most studied in the world, which means that solid research findings identify when and where PB produces significant social and political change. Most importantly, there are many comparative, longitudinal, and large-N studies from Brazil that demonstrate that PB is generating positive change. But, research on other countries, such as Peru and Mexico, suggest that PB’s impact is much weaker in those countries. The chapter provides a summary of the rich body of evidence that has emerged since 1989, and describes PB in Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, and Mexico.

The conclusion reflects on the analytical lessons have been learned across the two case studies. It suggests that there is evidence that qualitatively different forms of fast policy are at work in each of the sprawling fields of practice that are PB and CCTs, considering what this might mean for the politics of policy “translation.”

This chapter examines the urban studies literatures on urban politics and policy mobilities, from postcolonial southern perspectives. Analysis of urban politics is in flux within global urban studies. For years, the predominant focus of global North urban studies in analyzing urban politics resided with understanding growth machines and urban. Recently, there has been a general change in focus from discreet units at scale (i.e. a city government) to a ‘relational’ approach. What does this work look like, viewed from the global South? How do urbanists from the global South or those focused on its cities approach these arenas of scholarship? The chapter seeks answers to these questions with specific policies in mind. specific policies examined include participatory budgeting, bus rapid transit, enclave urbanization (new towns or satellite cities), sister city relationships, and climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Case study material from Hartford, San Juan, Zanzibar and Dongguan helps to show different ways in which South-South connectivities shape politics, governance and urban cultures at both ends.

This chapter develops a framework to explain how and why governments adopt and adapt PB as it spreads around the world. The chapter identifies three waves of adoption: 1989 through the mid-1990s; mid-1990s through mid-2000s; and mid-2000s through 2020. Within each wave, the authors identify where PB is adopted and who is driving adoption. They identify and explain key transformations in the areas of scale/place of adoption, decision-making rules, and social justice considerations during each wave. This chapter also provides a typology to help categorize the global patterns of change that we see across the PB landscape. The chapter identifies six types of PB programs, including: Empowered Democracy and Redistribution; Deepening Democracy through Community Mobilization; Mandated by National Governments; Digital Participation; Social Accountability and Development; Efficient Governance. The typology links PB’s core principles and the political motivations of the main actors promoting adoption. The typology then also captures the differences across the cases and helps the reader better understand the diversity of PB programs and outcomes.

Extensive experimentation with new democratic institutions took place in Asia across the 1980s and 1990s, but PB only formally arrived at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The spread of PB across Asia thus stems from democratic impulses to empower citizens in new democracies. This chapter focuses on three countries—South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia—to illuminate key trends in the region. The chapter shows that a small number of local governments initially adopted “PB-like” programs. Positive evaluations of these programs then spurred national governments to mandate PB to incorporate large segments of the population in public decision-making. An additional focus, toward the end of this chapter, is the expansion of PB to China because it helps to illuminate how the malleability of PB’s rules enables local governments to implement the program in authoritarian contexts; the use of PB by authoritarian governments is one of the most controversial issues facing PB today. The cases from Asia reviewed in this chapter offer the promise of social and political change. However, the limitations on evidence means that enough information about these programs’ specific impacts is still lacking.

Governments in sub-Saharan Africa began to adopt PB in the early 2000s. The World Bank, USAID, DFID, and other international organization led the push to expand PB. By 2019, the region included more than nine hundred programs. PB’s diffusion across sub-Saharan Africa has led to its transformation in scale, rules, and impact. Most PB programs in sub-Saharan Africa focus on building accountability and allowing participants to select small-scale development projects. These programs are located both in major cities (Maputo, Nairobi) as well as in poor, rural areas across the region. These programs are intended to improve local governance, but the involvement of international donors means that local governments must address their concerns as well as those of participants. The programs also emphasize placing new development projects in poor, marginalized communities, thus retaining potential for improving well-being. This chapter documents these trends by focusing on PB in Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda.

This chapter summarizes the main findings about PB’s adoption, adaptation, and impact. It raises questions about PB’s future and the limited evidence that continues to hamper researchers and policymakers’ ability to make key policy recommendations. PB is now used in settings as diverse as large cities in wealthy industrialized democracies, rural, low-income villages in countries governed by semi-authoritarian regimes, municipalities of middle-income countries in the Global South, and a variety of contexts in authoritarian countries. This diversity of program types and institutional contexts showcases the allure of PB around the world. Yet, it also highlights the challenges facing policymakers as they consider creating their own programs. The chapter ends with a conceptual discussion to guide policymakers as they adopt or support PB in the future.

Adopts a more global perspective on CCT policy development, considering the roles played by multilateral agencies. In one sense, this is a story of the formidable power of organizations like the World Bank as “knowledge managers.” On the other hand, the limits of the Bank’s hegemonic reach are also revealed: domestic politics continue to exert a major influence on project design and implementation which often contradict preferred paths of policy development.

Reflections #1, “Pursuing projects, following policies,” is the first in a series of reflections that close each section of the book, where we anticipate some of the methodological and interpretative challenges of this critical approach to policy mobility. Here, in conversation with the extended case study method, we characterize our strategy for researching a far-flung selection of interconnected fieldwork sites, which we provisionally style as a distended case study approach.

Chapter 3, “New Ideas for New York City,” explores Mayor Bloomberg’s experiment in South-North policy learning, his ultimately frustrated attempt to replicate the well-publicized successes of the Mexican Oportunidades program. New York City’s struggling CCT program is a sobering reminder of the challenges of “off-the-shelf” policy borrowing, but it also illustrates the persuasive power of evaluation methods and compelling invention narratives.